War and the Supreme Court

Updated April 28, 2004 12:01 a.m. ET

As the Supreme Court weighs the rights of the captured al Qaeda fighters whose cases will be heard today, we hope it won't forget the rights of the rest of us. Namely, Americans have the right to be protected against enemy attack.

This appears to be a more open question than it should be with the current High Court, whose sense of its own importance is such that it just might think it can do a better job of running the war on terror than an elected chief executive. For more than 200 years, the Supreme Court has deferred to...